The Internet has grown considerably in its scope of use over the past decades from a research network between governments and universities to a means of conducting both personal and commercial transactions by both businesses and individuals. The Internet was originally designed to be unstructured so that in the event of a breakdown the probability of completing a communication was high. The method of transferring information is based on a concept similar to sending letters through the mail. A message may be broken up into multiple TCP/IP packets (i.e., letters) and sent to an addressee. Like letters, each packet may take a different path to get to the addressee. While the many small packets over many paths approach provides relatively inexpensive access by a user to, for example, many Web sites, it is considerably slower than a point-to-point connection between a user and a Web site.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a user connection to the Internet of the prior art. In general a user 110 connects to the Internet via a point-of-presence (PoP) 112 traditionally operated by an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The PoP is connected to the ISP's backbone network 114, e.g., ISP1. Multiple ISP backbone networks, e.g., ISP1 and ISP2, are connected together by Network Access Points, e.g., NAP 170, to form the Internet “cloud” 160.
More specifically, a single user at a personal computer (PC) 120 has several choices to connect to the PoP 112 such as a direct subscriber line (DSL) modem 122, a TV cable modem 124, a standard dial-up modem 126, or a wireless transceiver 128 on, for example, a fixed wireless PC or mobile telephone. The term personal computer or PC is used herein to describe any device with a processor and a memory and is not limited to a traditional desktop PC. At the PoP 112 there will be a corresponding access device for each type of modem (or transceiver) to receive/send the data from/to the user 110. For the DSL modem 122, the PoP 112 has a digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM) as its access device. For the cable modem 124, the PoP 112 has a cable modem termination system (CTMS) headend as its access device. DSL and cable modem connections allow hundreds of kilo bits per second (Kbps) and are considerably faster than the standard dial up modem 126 whose data is received at the PoP 112 by a dial-up remote access server (RAS) 134. The wireless transceiver 128 could be part of a personal digital assistant (PDA) or mobile telephone and is connected to a wireless transceiver 136, e.g., a base station, at the PoP 112.
A business user (or a person with a home office) may have a local area network (LAN), e.g., PCs' 140 and 142 connected to LAN server 144 by Ethernet links. The business user may have a T1 (1.544 Mbps), a fractional T1 connection or a faster connection to the PoP 112. The data from the LAN server 144 is sent via a router (not shown) to a digital connection device, e.g., a channel service unit/data service unit (CSU/DSU) 146, which in turn sends the digital data via a T1 (or fractional T1) line 148 to a CSU/DSU at the PoP 112.
The PoP 112 may include an ISP server 152 to which the DSLAM 130, CTMS Headend 132, RAS 134, wireless transceiver 136, or CSU/DSU 150, is connected. The ISP server 152 may provide user services such as E-mail, Usenet, or Domain Name Service (DNS). Alternatively, the DSLAM 130, CTMS Headend 132, RAS 134, wireless transceiver 136, or CSU/DSU 150 may bypass the ISP server 152 and are connected directly to the router 154 (dashed lines). The server 152 is connected to a router 154 which connects the PoP 112 to ISP1's backbone having, e.g., routers 162, 164, 166, and 168. ISP1's backbone is connected to another ISP's backbone (ISP 2) having, e.g., routers 172, 174, and 176, via NAP 170. ISP2 has an ISP2 server 180 which offers competing user services, such as E-mail and user Web hosting. Connected to the Internet “cloud” 160 are Web servers 182 and 184, which provide on-line content to user 110.
While the Internet provides the basically functionality to perform commercial transactions for both businesses and individuals, the significant time delay in the transfer of information between, for example, a Web server and a business or individual user is a substantial problem. For example a user at PC 120 wants information from a Web site at Web server 182. There are many “hops” for the data to travel back from Web server 182 to user PC 120. Also because information is being “mailed” back in packets, the packets travel back typically through different paths. These different paths are shared with other users packets and some paths may be slow. Hence there is a significant time delay even if there were sufficient capacity in all the links between Web server 182 and user 120. However, because there are also choke points, i.e., where the traffic exceeds the capacity, there is even further delay.
Two major choke points are the last and second to last mile. The last mile is from the PoP 112 to the user 110. This is readily evident when the user 120 is using a dial up modem with a maximum speed of 56 Kbps. Even with a DSL modem of about 512 Kbps downloading graphics may be unpleasantly slow. The second to last mile is between the ISPs. An ISP with PoP 112 may connect via its backbone 114 to a higher level ISP (not shown) to get regional/national/global coverage. As an increase in bandwidth to the higher level ISP increases the local ISP's costs, the local ISP with, for example PoP 112, may instead reduce the amount of bandwidth available to user 110. The effect is that there is more traffic than link capacity between Web server 182 and PC 120 and hence a significant delay problem. In today's fast pace world this problem is greatly hindering the use of the Internet as a commercial vehicle.
Therefore there is a need for improving the efficiency of the transfer of information over a communications network, e.g., the Internet, such that, either individually or collectively, the user's wait time for information is significantly reduced.